Final Fantasy XI Online Wiki Guide

Grouping 101: FFXI Grouping Basics

1.1 The First StepsOnce you get into the early teens with almost any character in the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, you will find yourself grouping more and more. Over all, grouping allows you to gain experience faster and with less risk than soloing, and for some characters, it is almost the ONLY way to gain experience over a certain level.

This guide will make some basic recommendations for early grouping, and try to explain some of the secrets behind grouping for new players.

It is not a complete guide to grouping, and in fact I will ignore much of the complexities grouping offers to try and make the first groups as easy and painless as possible, both for the new player and the other players they will be grouping with.

1.2 When should I start grouping?As soon as possible! By this I don’t mean you should be going out and finding a balanced group of 6 people at level 1. But I do mean that you should start grouping up with another person early on in your development, especially if you have never played a grouping game like FFXI before.

Between levels 5 and 10, try and find a friend of the same level and hunt together from time to time just to get a feel of how to form parties and basic party dynamics. Solo XP for these levels is probably still faster than group XP, but grouping can be fun and you’ll need those skills for when you are level 50 and sitting on your rear end for 20 hours because no one wants to group with you

Once you get past 10, you can start slowly dropping off the soloing and get more into groups. Keep in mind the EXACT level depends on your skill, the area, the job you have, the equipment and so on, but post 10, and certainly post 15 you should find groups make up the bulk of your play time.

1.3 Why group though?Because you have to! No, kidding aside, grouping is faster and safer. You get all the benefits of other Jobs in your group without having to play those Jobs yourself. That, and, well, frankly you’d go crazy soloing easys at level 40 and still dieing 90% of the time

1.4 Aggro Management, the primary function of the groupWhile the groups goal is massive XP quick, the actually TASK the group performs is “aggro management while thumping the living daylights out of something”.

Note: While there are said to be two different types of aggro pools, to keep it simple I will talk about them as if there is one at the moment

Aggro (derived from Aggressiveness, also often called Hate) is basically how much the monsters you are fighting hates you. Monsters in FFXI will always attack the person they hate the most.

What causes the monster to hate you? Well, the obvious of course, if you hurt the monster, the monster will hate you for it and become more aggressive towards you. The less obvious is if you HEAL any player that is attacking the monster, they will also hate the healer. There are also several skills that cause an increase of aggro or other subtle aggro adjustments

The hate/aggro fills up a pool as people are attacking the monster, one pool for every player in the group. As the pools fill, the monster basically just attacks the person has the biggest pool. The groups task is to make sure that the person who can handle the damage (They have the best defence and highest hit points) also has the highest aggro pool. This is the essence of aggro management.

advertisement

Example (using made up numbers)

Warrior A hits the mob for 10 damage (+10 to Warrior A’s Aggro pool)

Monster hits Warrior A for 40 HP damage

White Mage heals Warrior A for 30 HP (+30 to White Mages Aggro pool)

- At this point the mob “hates” the White Mage (30 pts) more than the Warrior (10 pts). A bad thing (tm), and it turns on the White Mage -

Monster hits White Mage for 60 HP damage killing him

Warrior A runs away and dies just before he zones!

1.5 Group LootJust a side here, since I know loot is a favourite of many people, once you are in a group there are two ways to split the loot. The normal way is the “lot” system where the loot is collected in a separate area where everyone can see it. After a while, that loot is (mostly) randomly distributed amongst the group (without you needing to do anything). I mentioned (mostly) randomly since there seems to be a bias in the game where higher levels tend to get more loot in groups than lower levels. Just keep an eye out for this, though if you are in a nice balanced group very close to each others levels, you should be ok.

Should there be an item of special importance to you (or someone else) you can “LOT” for that item, that is select the item and roll a random number from 0 to 999. The person with the highest number gets the item.

To access the lot system press SELECT to get the on screen sub menu, if there is loot, there is a new menu item above the CHECK menu, called TREASURE. Click that to see the list of items found so far. Select and click any item to Lot on it.

WARNING: It is seen as bad manners to lot on EVERYTHING. Most of the time, unless something rare pops up, no one need lot since the distribution is automatic. Don’t be surprised if you are kicked from a group for lotting constantly

WARNING: If your party zones, the last person to zone gets everything left in the treasure chest. Either wait till the loot is randomly distributed or get everyone to lot the items in the chest if you need to zone.

WARNING: If ONE person in the group has a full inventory, and the treasure chest tries to randomly distribute loot, it will fail and that item is lost forever. Make sure you sort your inventory often to prevent this.

The second, less used method of loot distribution, is where the leader gets everything and decides who gets what. Any rares found do not go to this leader however, and still end up in the lot treasure chest regardless of what method of distribution is used.

1.6 Finding other peopleAn important aspect of grouping is finding other people to group with (Either when looking for a group to join or making one yourself)

You can do this easily though the /sea command. This command searches for people defined by the parameters you set

Examples:

/sea - Finds everyone in the zone/sea all - Finds everyone on the server/sea whm - Finds only White Mages in the zone/sea 10-20 - Finds all players from level 10 to level 20 in the zone/sea inv - Finds all players with Looking For Group flag on/sea whm 10-14 inv - Finds all 10 to14 White Mages who are LFG/sea rdm 15-16 - Find all Red Mages between 15 and 16/sea all whm - Find all White Mages on the server

The ideal group for the best experience basically is made up of people very close to each other in level. This can get complex, and to simplify things here I will say that you should try and keep the party with 4 levels (or less) of each other.

This means the lowest level player should be about 4 levels away from the highest and no more. For basic partying, the highest level can be the Tank(s), since they are the ones that have to stand toe to toe with the mob. The lowest can generally be the Healer. The exact split of levels is also important, but I will leave that till the advanced discussion

NOTE: As a rule of thumb, when looking for groups, I recommend making the initial level range +2 and -2 of your own level. So a level 15 would be looking for 13-17. This gives you the most “bang for your search buck” but may not turn up the best results.

For the “perfect” range, you want to search for +1 and -1 of your own level. Be aware that this restricts your search patterns a lot more and it may cause you problems finding groups initially. As mentioned, a Tank makes a better “highest level” in a party than a Healer, so you may want to adjust your searches to account for the Job you are playing.

This topic, like so many others, has a great deal more depth than is obvious at first glance. In fact the “rules” recommend above are actually fairly inaccurate if you want to go deeply into the numbers. Frankly I am playing it on the safe side. For more information on Group XP look at this guide Understanding How Solo and Party Exp Works by Eric Hixson. It goes into great depth on how your group XP is divided and dispels several grouping myths

1.7 Joining a groupYou will need to familiarize yourself joining groups of course, which is why I recommend grouping with a low level friend as a sub level 10 just to get the hang of it.

The basics are:

- You should to turn on GROUP MODE so you can be identified as Looking for a Group. Go to MENU | PARTY | SOLO OFF. You know you are in Looking For Group (LFG) mode when you see a green exclamation mark (!) next to your name above your character

- Once invited, you will see the text “So-and-so invites you to their group” in the chat window. Go to the Party menu (MENU | PARTY) and click Yes or No in the Accept Invite menu.

- You can auto-accept joining a group from the same Party menu, third item down from the top. This just skips the Accept group stage but is otherwise the same

NOTE: You don’t NEED your LFG flag turned on to be invited to a group, but it doesn’t hurt and allows other people to see that you are indeed wishing to group up with some like-minded individuals. Having the flag on also makes it a bit easier for the leader to add you but isn’t actually required.

1.8 Forming your own groupOf course, at some stage you are going to want to do this. You should get some experience first in joining and then playing in groups before you try this since you will want to know what sort of group you want (What types of Jobs for example) as well as where to hunt, how to control the group and so on.

Briefly, forming a group is much the same as joining one mechanically. You will need to use /sea to find members you want, and then send /tells and invite them and co-ordinate meeting and other group organization.

NOTE: You CAN invite people who do not have their Looking For Group flag turned on. Type /sea playername and invite them from there. This function works in a 1 zone radius, so you can invite people one zone away

This section is covered further in Advance Grouping 201 if I ever get around to writing it ^_^

1.9 Once you have joined, first stepsOnce you have been invited into a group the first thing you need do is FIND the other players. Group invites can be done over vast distances, from one end of the zone to the other and you may not actually see the party.

Fret not, there is an easy way to find them without asking (and looking like a newbie)

Go to your map (you DO have a map of the area you are hunting in right? If not, best to leave the grouping till later and go buy or quest for the map)

Once on the map, toggle through the Marker Lists (left or right arrow) till you find the group markers, here you will see everyone in your group marked on your map exactly where they are.

Using this information you should be able to easily find the primary group. If in doubt, head for the leader (They will have their name with a yellow dot next to it in the group listing bottom right of your screen)

1.10 Group IntroductionsOnce you have found your party, say hi to the group (Alt-P for /party chat). Some groups introduce each other, some don’t. At the very least the leader should tell new group members some basic information, who the Primary Tank is, who the Puller is and where the Camp is (See below for definitions of these ideas)

This is the time to determine what your role is in the group, don’t assume someone WILL tell you, ask… If there are two or more people with your Job in the group, send /tells to the other people or ask over /party to determine what THEY will do and to come to some understanding so the two of you don’t over lap. Don’t forget to tell the group this so they know too…

Sometimes, the leaders of groups will tell everyone exactly what they are doing, often they don’t however, leaving it up to everyone to decide for themselves. The second sort of group usually dies quickly unless the already know each other and know their roles well.

1.11 CampingA camp is simply a stationary area where your party sits and waits for the Mobs to come to them.

Camping is normally safer and better than “wandering around and killing things that we find”. Don’t wander, stay in your camp, stay in a group close together (with some exceptions, Distance Damagers like Mages/Healers will want to hang back to stay away from Area Attacks) and WAIT for the mobs to come to you, that’s the Pullers job (see below)

Generally the leader or the Puller will tell you were to camp, never leave the camp while the Puller is away because the Puller may come back to find no one there to help them kill the mob they just dragged half way across the globe. Again there are exceptions, like if you get an accidentally aggro spawn. Please do mention to the Puller that you are all high-tailing it to the nearest zone line however, it is just polite.

1.12 MacrosA brief note on Macros. You should have ALL your primary skills and abilities that you use often macroed. Macros differ for different jobs, and are discussed briefly in the Advanced Jobs sections.

If you don’t have everything macroed or don’t understand them, read up about them BEFORE you group. Half way through the first pull is a bad time to mention “I don’t have Cure I macroed!” or “I am tired of typing /provoke all the time :(“

2. So, whats in a group?Four things (What? Only four? What about….? Remember this is a BASIC guide, yes there are oodles of other things in groups and ways groups can thrive, but as far as I am concerned, if you don’t know the basic four, you won’t be having much luck when you try doing a “Yodokama” two months down the line and don’t understand why it doesn’t work)

The Tank – The person who soaks up the monsters attacks. The monster should be hitting the Tank constantly

The Puller – This person goes and finds the next monster for the party to kill

The Healer – They heal the party, they should be basically ONLY healing the tank

The Damage Dealer – They hurt the mob, others may hurt it too, but the Primary Damage dealer should be doing the most damage the fastest

Now a group performing only these actions isn’t going to be amazingly effective, there are a lot of other things people can do to make a group more effective but these are really the basics. Don’t assume that you NEED these four things either, I’ve seen effective Tank only groups and the like, but understanding these terms will help you immensely in the game

NOTE: In the list of jobs below I am keeping it simple, and to the basic Jobs. If someone manages to unlock a Summoner and still does not know about this stuff then, well, I am not sure I can help them

The Tank is normally the person in the group with the BEST defence and the HIGHEST hit points. The Tank also needs a way of gain aggro from the monster, usually via means other than damage such as Provoke (often shorted to Voke)

Basically, the Tanks job is target the mob and attack it, then use their Provoke skill to make sure the mob is ONLY attacking them. If the mob loses interest in the Tank, the Tank should Provoke it.

NOTE: As a Tank you will need to make sure you are the up-to-date with equipment, much more so than other Jobs in fact. A Level 20 Tank who is still wearing level 10 armour will be torn apart like tissue paper and suck way too much mana from the Healers who will struggle to keep them alive.

The Pullers job is to go and find a monster to kill, /check it to make sure the level matches what the party can pull, attract the monsters attention and return to the party camp site with the mob in tow.

The puller is responsible for checking the party status too, so they know when the party is healed and full of mana so they are ready for battle. Remember to notify the party that you are coming in with a mob and include the NAME so the party knows what to expect and the WHM’s can cast short term buffs on the group. Often a Puller will include other details such as the difficulty rating of the mob

NOTE: The Puller should generally not pull with Provoke, which is the Main Tanks job (Unless they ARE the main tank, stranger things have happened). If a puller uses Provoke to pull it makes it very hard to get the mob OFF the puller once it gets to the party

NOTE: ONLY the Puller should EVER initiate combat. No one else should ever attack a mob unless it is currently trying to chew the Pullers knee-caps off. I don’t care if it looked “easy” or you were “bored”… ONLY the Puller EVER starts battle and that’s final

Something to be aware of, in advanced groups there may be more Pullers to reduce down time between finding monsters. This doesn’t mean anyone can go off and pull in something to kill. If you aren’t the DESIGNATED PULLER, or if you are out of contact with other pullers in the party, HANDS OFF!

The Healer heals, that’s it. In an ideal situation, the healer should be healing the Tank only since the Tank is doing such a good job keeping the aggro on himself very high.

Some things to be aware of, make SURE the Tank has time to gain aggro before healing him. You can gain a lot of aggro in one cast while it may take the Tank a little while to do the same by thumping it (assuming /provoke timer is not ready yet). Also be aware you shouldn’t heal the Puller as he comes in (Unless it is obvious he is about to die) since the Mob being pulled will have very little aggro on it as it comes in and a Heal will make you Number One Enemy!

Don’t bother healing someone whose hit points are displayed in a WHITE text, unless the battle is over and you are topping them up

Start thinking of healing someone whose hit points are displayed YELLOW, especially if they are a low HP character like a Mage. If aggro is on the tank nicely, start a heal spell on them

If the hit points are in RED, you better have a heal spell going off already else things are going to get sticky

NOTE: Healing is not cut and dry, you may find situations where you need to heal someone who still has 70% HPs left simply because they are LOW maximum hit points and one decent hit could kill them at that stage. Watch the HP bars closely and you’ll soon get an idea when and who to heal first.

The Primary Damage dealer tends to be a weaker Job or Character that can do vast amounts of damage but sacrifices for this ability with poorer than average defence.

The job of this class is leaving the Tank to gain a lot of aggro then nuke the mob with high damage attacks to kill it quickly. The difficulty with this aspect of grouping is high damage = high aggro and the Damage Dealer doesn’t want aggro so it is a balance between the Tank controlling aggro and the Damage Dealer dealing damage

NOTE: Be careful of spamming your maximum damage attacks the moment the mob comes into view. Doing this will cause so much aggro you are almost guaranteed to die and nothing anyone can do will be of much help. Try and graduate your damage output, wait till the Tank has good Aggro, then start with lower level damage and move upward to your biggest hits.

2.1 Buffs and DebuffsI didn’t mention these as a “job” that a group needs since these tend to be done by several classes who may be performing other tasks during battle. It is also a little more complex than the other aspects but does need to be mentioned.

Any class with Buffs should cast them pre-battle and make sure they monitor these for recasting as the day wears on. White Mages have some nice group protects, and if a White Mage asks for the party to gather together in a bunch for buffing, it is in your best interest to get as close to the WHM as possible. Several of the BAR range of Buffs have really short ranges and short durations and need to be cast fairly often. Protects are also highly useful and should maintained at all times

Debuffs are another matter and are usually cast initially as the puller brings the mob into the party. Party members should discuss who is going to cast what (Especially RDMs and WDMs who have over lapping spells) so the same spell isn’t cast by two people.A single debuff on a hard mob, like Paralyze, even if it prevents one attack, saves more mana than it would cost in heals. Always cast debuffs when you can.

As I suggested Debuffer may even be considered the 5th profession a group needs, but for this Guide let’s keep it simple

3. Once the battle is overYou lived right? Right?Well if you did this is what you can expect to happen:

- The Healer tosses a heal on the Puller to make sure they are fully healed

- The Puller runs off to find another mob (possibly delaying pulling it in until the group is ready)

- The Healers heal up the primary tanks and other Tanks that are lower than YELLOW hit points. They should normally NOT heal sitting characters

- The Healers sit down to regenerate mana

- The Tanks and other melee combat Jobs *REMAIN STANDING* so they don’t lose their TP.

- People check out the loot and start lotting on Flint Stones and Fire Crystals for some obscure reason

NOTE: These are not the ONLY things that will happen of course, in fact things can different considerably, but for new groups, it won’t really get much more complicated than this initially.

4. But, but what about….?Yes, this Guide leaves a lot of unanswered questions, I mean I didn’t even touch on Renkeis. Frankly, those will be the least of your problems if you cannot keep a tank alive and taking the aggro on a single Tough target, however I will touch on some advanced topics here:

What is a Renkei?These are chains of special attacks in a certain pattern with certain timings. The attacks need to match each other, following a set pattern. If the chain is completed successfully, then the damage output can be IMMENSE and will end the battle MUCH faster.

What is an experience chain?Something you probably won’t experience for a while. Fighting lots of hard monsters, and killing them quickly provides extra experience in the form of a chain. Very basically, the faster you kill a tough mob, the longer the chain becomes and the more extra XP you get.

You never even mentioned <advanced job here>!!As I said, if you get to those Jobs I assume you already know everything there is here, lets hope so anyway! :)

But <Job X> is a MUCH better Tank than <Job Y>!!!Probably, who knows? The basic behind a tank is to stand there and absorb damage on behalf of the party. This is what I was trying to get across in this Guide. If I can get one new player to understand these simple rules I will be SOOOO much happier! ^_^

What is a Yodokama?Nothing important, it used to be a combo of special positional attacks a Thief used to be able to do. A patch recently removed this ability

What is a Fuidama?This is a combo of positional special attacks that allow a Thief to do MASSIVE amounts of damage, yet offset the Aggro from that damage onto another player.